


Buried Alive

by Grumperella



Series: Febuwhump 2021: The Mandalorian Misadventures [6]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Accidental Mand’alor Acquisition, Axe Whump, BAMF Din Djarin, Din Djarin Whump, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt Din Djarin, Koska Whump, Mandalor!Din, Mandalorians (Star Wars), Planet Mandalore (Star Wars), Post Ep 16, Protective Din Djarin, The Mandalorian Darksaber (Star Wars), The Nite Owls, whump all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29364060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grumperella/pseuds/Grumperella
Summary: Febuwhump Prompt Day 9: Buried Alive___Koska froze.The sun glinted off of Din’s silver beskar’gam, halo-ing him in light as it spilled in from the window behind him. Aided by his jetpack, he hovered above them, and in his hand hummed the striking black blade of the darksaber. It crackled with power...(Din and the Nite Owls are scouting the city of Keldabe on Mandalore when a dilapidated building collapses on the crew...)___Takes place after Ep. 16, with my working assumption that Din has (reluctantly) accepted his role as the new Mand'alor (as established in my ficMando'ade, Vode An)
Relationships: Din Djarin & Bo-Katan Kryze, Din Djarin & Koska Reeves, Koska Reeves & Axe Woves
Series: Febuwhump 2021: The Mandalorian Misadventures [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156874
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	Buried Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post from my existing Febuwhump series, because I'm transitioning the multi-chap fit into a series.

Din groaned, consciousness returning slowly. It felt like swimming up through a deep, heavy blackness… sensation fading in and out as he came to. 

Sound filtered through his audio processors… the creaking and crumbling of stone, the clink-tap of little rocks tumbling down around him. It all sounded so close... and yet far away at the same time… 

Humming out a choked breath, the Mandalorian realized that his chest _hurt…_ and that his legs were pinned under something… He tried to shift his body and was only able to twist to the side a short ways until his knee complained violently. Panting, he flopped back down onto his back. Groggily opening his eyes, a shaft of light pierced through his t-visor and he sucked in a breath at the stabbing pain that erupted behind his eyes. Clenching them shut again, the man threw an armored hand over his helmet and simply laid there, body tense, cataloguing what hurt and trying to remember what happened.

 _Flashes of a flickering dome, swirling sand…_ Keldabe. 

He was in Keldabe with Bo-Katan and her Nite Owls… they’d… that’s right, they’d taken refuge in a dilapidated building as the sandstorm hit. Bo-Katan had shouted over their comms that she was going back to the control center to re-engage the protective dome. Holding their ground in the building, Din had stayed with Koska and Axe as the sandstorm raged. Then… the sound.

The crack and groan of the building had been barely audible over the storm, but to the three Mandalorians it felt deafening. Looking up, a haunting gap had appeared in the ceiling above them, splintering wider by the second. Shouting at the others to retreat out the front, the three had barely risen from their crouched positions when the ground beneath their feet shifted, the entire building collapsing around them. Din had tried to reach for Koska but her hand had slipped out of his just as he was smashed backwards by crumbling duracrete and stone. 

He didn’t remember much after that, besides waking up. 

The sounds around him had calmed considerably… The sandstorm must have passed, but the vacuum of sound only made every creak and grind of stone around him echo like a blaster shot. Gritty dust filled the air, and when Din tried opening his eyes again, he could see the evening light reflected on the floating particles. It looked like the air above him glowed…

Blinking slowly, Din wondered if he was concussed.

He cleared his throat roughly, gravelly voice crackling through their helmet comms. 

“Axe… Koska… do you copy?” 

Silence. Din grimaced, eyes clenching closed. _They might not be dead. They’re just still unconscious._ He repeated that to himself a couple times.

Well, he was no use to anyone buried here, if he wanted to check on the other Mandalorians, he had to get himself out.

Taking stock of himself again, Din pushed off the blocks of stone on his chest and was able to shift himself up onto his elbows. There was a gap in the crumbled building above his head that extended up to a far away window. Otherwise, there were huge chunks of the building that had fallen all around him. Luckly, his beskar seemed to have protected him from being utterly crushed… but looking down, a cracked and mottled stone pillar was pinning his legs. Its ornate moulding was keeping the pillar from falling flush against the floor, which was the only reason why he hadn't been crippled. 

Wiggling his toes in his boots, Din let out a harsh breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding when he confirmed he could still feel his feet. _Thank kriff._ Everything was sore, but there wasn’t any unbearable pain… he was just pinned. 

For a few minutes he tried pulling and shifting, but to no avail. Unless he wanted to break both his ankles to free his heavy boots, he was well and truly stuck. 

He tried his comms again.

“Koska… Axe… Bo-Katan… come in.” Moments of silence passed and Din bowed his head, a wave of anger and sorrow invading his thoughts. Then, then comms crackled. 

_“Kshhhhh... -_ in? Din, are you in there?” Bo-Katan. Din’s breath whipped back in.

“I’m here.” He rushed out. “I’m here, in the rubble. The building-”

“I know, I can see it.” Came the curt reply. She hesitated. “Did- are Reeves and Woves with you?” Din tilted his helmet down in grief, despite knowing the woman couldn’t see it.

“No. We… got separated. The building came down too fast, we couldn’t get out in time.” He paused. “They aren’t answering my hails.”

“Mine either.” Came the tight voice. As much as Bo-Katan wanted everyone to believe she was a hardened battle machine, he knew she cared about her team. Koska and Axe had been regaling him with stories of their time together, the years spent fighting off the Empire as the Nite Owls…

He sighed. 

“Are you hurt?” Came the voice again. Din considered the question. Besides his headache and his chest, which would abate with time, he wasn’t injured.

“Not especially, no.” He finally responded. “But I’m pinned under something. I’ve tried to get out, but” he tried again, pulling at his legs with a grunt and only stopping when he felt something in his ankle pop. He grit his teeth, voice strained. “that’s not happening.”

A moment of silence passed, he heard shuffling outside, then the entire building groaned loudly and the shuffling stopped.

“This structure is fragile… if I try to come to you, I could bring it the rest of the way down. Din, can you reach your weapons?”

The man glanced down, twisting awkwardly side to side. Lowering a hand to his hip, he could feel his blaster still in its holster, and the darksaber still clinched to his belt.

“Yeah.” He finally responded breathlessly, grimacing. The movement had _hurt_ , leaving him winded... that must be a cracked or broken rib then. 

“Use the saber.”

Bo-Katan’s voice cut through the haze of his tumbling thoughts. Din froze, thinking he must have heard wrong, and tapped at his helmet to increase the audio volume.

“What?”

“Use the darksaber, _vod_. It can cut through almost anything, certainly stone.”

The man’s helmet clinked against the floor as it fell back heavily and pain pulsed behind his eyes. He shook his head. 

Huh. He hadn’t even thought of that. 

Craning his neck to look down at the silver hilt at his hip, the Mandalorian unclipped it and brought it up to his viewfinder, twisting it between his fingers. He sighed, then took a deep breath and braced himself. 

Pulling up into a sitting position, the pain in his chest throbbed angrily, burning hot and sending waves of gooseflesh across his body. The dust that found its way under his helmet made him cough, the burst of compression shooting lightning bolts of agony across his ribs. The man groaned and curled an arm around his chest, trying his best not to blackout on the spot. 

Sipping small, slow breaths, Din finally felt the agony recede to a dull ache which he pushed down firmly. Locking his eyes on the pillar, he ignited the darksaber, the black blade humming and crackling with white sparks along its length. Leaning forward, trying to ignore the pain, Din thrust the blade into the stone.

With fascination, he watched the rock turn red and molten, the effect expanding the longer he held it. Swiftly pulling the sword back, Din inspected the now-liquid hole in the stone. _Huh._ He tried slashing this time, cutting into the pillar on the right side of his legs. It took him a few tries, but after working the area, the stone had either melted or been cut away enough that it finally crumbled, one heavy piece smashing down to the ground beside him, and the other pressing harder into his shins.

Gritting his teeth in pain, Din quickly went through the same exercise on his left side, until that piece too shattered, and all that was left was fragmented rock on his legs. As soon as the pressure lifted, the man hurried to pull his legs out from under the debris, heaving a relieved sigh. 

“I’m free.” He finally updated through the comm. 

“Well done.” Bo-Katan responded shortly. “Meet me outside. The dome could go down again any minute, we need to retreat to the control room.”

Din paused just as he was clipping the saber back to his belt. His comm sizzled as he breathed, hesitating...

“What about Axe and Koska?” 

He heard the other Mandalorian sigh.

“They’re not responding to hails. They could be anywhere in this wreckage. We don’t have time to dig them out when the dome could go down at any moment. We’ll have to regroup and come back for them.”

Din frowned at that. If they were alive and injured, they could be dead by then...

“They weren’t far from me when the building came down, they must be close.” Turning to step over a large chunk of stone, Din flicked on his thermal sensor. “I’m going to look for them.”

Bo-Katan’s aggravated growl was just audible.

“Din, we don’t have _time_ for this. We have to go repair the dome. If it comes down again, then _all_ is lost.”

The man just kept scanning the rubble, igniting his jetpack to hover over fallen hunks of multi-colored ceiling and walls. He ignored her. The building wasn’t even recognizable now, but he moved towards where he thought he last saw the two Mandalorians. 

“Koska!” He called down into the debris. “Axe!” 

He kept calling out, both loudly and through his comm as he kept scanning, executing a simple grid search of the space.

Then, he heard the faint pounding of beskar on stone.

* * *

Koska had woken first, groggily. Blinking her eyes open, she paused in confusion. She blinked again, to be sure her eyes were actually open. They were… yet it was still pitch black.

_Where was she?_

Labored, whistling breaths sounded beside her, and Koska reached out a glove to pat around the space. She seemed to be in a small pocket of stone… mere inches above her was a solid slab of rock stretched jaggedly across the space. On either side of her by mere feet, broken and ragged layers of duracrete stacked precariously. She could taste dust on her tongue… and blood. The building collapse came back to her in a rush.

Ripping off her helmet, Koska tried to calm her deep, panicked breaths, feeling around the small space desperately, snagging her flight suit on saw-toothed edges of crumbling stone. Coming to the realization that she was thoroughly buried, the Nite Owl fell back against an uneven wall and curled her knees up to her armored chest, eyes clenched closed. She breathed through her nose and out her mouth. In and out. In and out. She had to calm down. If she was trapped in here, then she only had so much air…

Hearing the whistling sound again, the warrior started patting along the dusty floor. After a moment, her glove hit a body… it was warm, and utterly still.

“Axe?” She whispered into the darkness. “Din?”

Feeling up the arm to the pauldron and across the chest, Koska immediately recognized Axe’s _beskar’gam_.

“Axe!” She breathed urgently, shaking his shoulder. The man didn’t respond. His breathing sounded strained and wet… he had to be injured. Though, without being able to see him properly, she couldn’t gauge the full extent of it. Continuing her examination by touch, Koska felt around Axe’s chest up to his helmet, glad to feel that it was still intact, then to his other arm, and down his body. She was stopped abruptly at his stomach, where a jagged chunk of debris pressed down on him. Heart jumping into her throat, she felt desperately around the rock, trying to feel if it penetrated the man… but she couldn’t tell, not through her gloves. Punching the hunk of stone angrily Koska let out a frustrated little scream into the small space.

She _hated_ being trapped. It wasn’t so much the small space as it was that she couldn’t _get out_.

Trapped. Trapped. _Trapped_. The word echoed and circled in her mind as she clenched her fists tightly on top of Axe’s limp body, her breath speeding into small, desperate pants. 

Realizing that she was panicking, Koska grit her teeth hard and shook her head. Scrambling for her helmet, she shoved it back over her head and tapped the comm.

“Din! Bo-Katan! Do you copy?!” Only a soft fizzing that stuttered in and out sounded back at her. Scowling, Koska tore the helmet off and smoothed her hand over the exterior, finding that her antenna had been broken off, an uneven dent right where she knew the comm unit was. To do such damage… whatever had impacted her head would surely have killed her if it hadn’t been for her beskar…

“Dank farrik.”

Swallowing thickly, Koska swore again and tossed the helmet back on the floor before crawling back over to Axe’s body. Gingerly lifting the helmet off his head, she inspected it sightlessly. His antenna had also been torn off, but the comm unit seemed intact. _So_ , she could maybe comm, but without any range. Hoping that the stone wouldn’t interfere, she placed the man’s much larger helmet over her head and thumbed the control manually.

“This is Koska, I repeat, this is Koska. I’m trapped under the collapsed building. Does anyone copy?” Heart dropping, she heard only silence. 

“ _Vode_ ,” she tried again, voice more frantic this time, “ _susulur’ni,_ are you there? Axe is injured, we need immediate evac.” Still only met with silence she punched the ground and growled angrily. “ _Someone_ copy!!”

Ripping her companion’s helmet off her head Koska threw it across the small space in a fit of rage. It clanged loudly against the stone. 

This was kriffing _perfect_. Buried under who knows how much building debris with an injured teammate and no working comms. No way to let Bo-Katan know where they were…

Slumping down beside the still form of her friend, Koska bent a knee up to her chest and rested her cheek on it, one hand resting on Axe’s pauldron. 

Nothing to do but wait then... and slowly suffocate to death.

* * *

Minutes felt like hours as they slowly ticked by. Abruptly, Koska heard a hacking cough beside her and she hurriedly shuffled to her knees, bending over the stirring form. She placed one hand on his paldron and another on his chest, hoping to ground him as he awoke in the dark.

The coughing trailed away weakly and she heard Axe’s head shift side to side in alarm, then a gloved hand came up to cover her own on his chestplate. 

“Koska?” His voice was rasping, dry with dust.

“I’m here.” She assured him.

“What… what happened?” 

“The building… we were taking shelter from the sandstorm when the dome fell… then the building fell too. It collapsed on us... we’re buried.” Hearing the man’s sharp intake of breath, she pressed down on him gently. “Don’t move. You have something pinning you. We just… we just need to wait for the others to dig us out.”

“Din?”

Koska shook her head, before realizing he couldn’t see her.

“Not here,” was all she knew to say. She didn’t know where the _Mand’alor_ was or if he was even alive. If he wasn’t, she could safely say that his had been the shortest reign of a sole ruler in Mandalorian history. She scoffed, the thought amusing her.

“What?” Axe asked, weakly.

“Nothing.” She murmured, shaking her head again. “Just imagining the heroic way Bo-Katan will manage to save us.”

Axe chuckled, then wheezed. “Think she can lift a whole building?” 

Koska smirked, patting his shoulder. “I guess we’ll see, huh?”

“I hope she… hurries...” his voice murmured between labored gasps, trailing off.

Alarm spiking, Koska was about the smack her teammate awake when she heard the faint sound of jetpack engines and a voice… It sounded far above them... but considering how dense the debris was, she couldn't be sure.

“Axe! Your wish is coming true, brother!” Scrabbling away from the man, Koska followed the sound of the jetpack. 

“Hey! Hey! Down here! Down here!!” She called desperately, hacking a rough cough as dust filled her mouth. The jetpack seemed to grow more distant and her heart dropped. Dropping to the grimy floor, she felt around anxiously until her fingers tangled in the interior of her helmet. Grabbing it firmly by the pointed chin, she started banging it with all her might against the stone slab above them.

“Hey!” She cried again. “We’re down here!”

Axe groaned in pain at the deafening pounding of the beskar on stone that echoed in the small space, but Koska didn’t stop.

Suddenly, the jetpack was just above them. She could hear it, it was closer, it had to be. A faint thud echoed as a vibration more than a sound through the stone…

Then, to her surprise, the rock slab she was pressed against began growing hot. Unsure what to make of that, Koska fumbled backwards and scooted away from the heat until she was flush against Axe’s limp form, she felt him turn his face into her thigh. 

“What’s happening?” He whispered, voice thready and frail.

“I… I don’t know. I think we’re being rescued though.”

Then, for the first time in what felt like ages, Koska could _see_ something. A glowing, orange-red. To her shock, the glow of the molten heat illuminated the stone on the far end of their air pocket, quite literally _melting_ it down onto the dusty floor below, where the liquid stone cooled in little black piles.

A loud, booming _CRACK_ sounded and the stone shattered, collapsing inwards in a shower of crumbling bulwark. Yellow tipped gloves reached in and firmly grasped the edge of the remaining slab and the roar of a jetpack sounded, helping the hands lift the stone away. As the hunk of rock angled away from them, Koska squinted at the orange light that filtered down into their little hollow. She froze.

The sun glinted off of Din’s silver _beskar’gam_ , halo-ing him in light as it spilled in from the window behind him. Aided by his jetpack, he hovered above them, and in his hand hummed the striking black blade of the darksaber. It crackled with power.

“You guys okay?” 

Koska nearly choked in relief to hear the man’s voice. 

“Uh, y-yes...” She responded, eyes wide as she took in the sight above her… the _Mand’alor_... Din’s t-visor angled towards the now unconscious form beside her. Koska glanced down, following his gaze. Now, that she could see, she took in Axe’s bloodied face - his nose was definitely broken - and the alarmingly massive stone that was crushing his midsection. 

“Okay, no, actually. Axe is injured. He’s pinned… we have to get him out.”

Din nodded and touched down gently in the small cavity where they’d been trapped, darksaber still humming ominously at his side. 

Crouching beside them, Din examined the stone that trapped their teammate. Koska followed his stare… The stone was a huge chunk of the building’s ceiling that had collapsed from above them and fallen at an angle into Axe. It had been stopped by the beskar cuirass, but was slowly crushing the man’s insides.

The taller man stood and his silver helmet tilted down to look at her. 

“Are you well enough to lift him?” 

Rising to her feet shakily, Kosha rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles, releasing a deep breath.

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’m going to cut away the stone and hold it as long as I can. I need you to pull Axe out quickly, then we’ll both carry him out. This whole building is still unstable, so we’ll need to move fast.”

Koska nodded grimly. “Got it.”

Bending to retrieve her helmet, she placed it firmly back over her head, then replaced Axe’s as well. Nodding to Din, she laced her arms under her teammate's and bent her legs into a ready stance. The silver-donned Mandalorian moved to the stone slab and, with a two handed grip, he thrust the darksaber forcefully straight into the rock. Koska couldn’t help when her jaw dropped. She’d never seen a blade do _that_ before.

Watching the stone turn molten red around the blade, Koska waited anxiously. Just as it seemed the stone was going to start melting down towards the supine figure on the floor, Din pulled out the blade and slashed a powerful horizontal strike that shattered through the slab's weakened core. The stone beneath his strike cracked and fragmented, the upper part starting to fall just as Din thrust the blade back into the stone, higher up. 

“Go! Go!” he panted, holding the hunk of rock, but Koska was already pulling. With a grunt she hauled the limp Mandalorian out from under the debris. 

“Got him!” She cried breathlessly. Din wasted no time pulling out the blade and shutting it off in the same motion, gripping it in one hand as he turned and looped his other under Axe’s armpit. 

Without a word, both Mandalorians ignited their jetpacks, launching out of the small hollow with their unconscious teammate gripped between them, the thunderous sound of settling and crumbling stone booming behind them.

Koska’s breath hitched when they crested the mound of debris in the middle of the collapsed building and escaped out a large hole in the wall.

_They were out. They’d made it out._

And there, standing on the sandy street a safe distance from the building, stood Bo-Katan, hands on her hips.

Landing as gently as they could in tandem, Koska stumbled slightly under Axe’s dead weight. Carefully, she gripped his torso and laid him down on the gritty street, looking him over in concern. He was a bit worse for wear, but nothing that some bacta gel and bacta patches couldn't fix…

“ _Su cuy'gar_.” She heard Bo-Katan intone evenly to the man behind her. “You found them.”

“Yes.” 

Koska could hear the tension in their voices, and wondered what they were fighting about _now_. It didn’t matter, now they had to keep moving. Twisting around while keeping one hand on Axe’s chest, Koska looked up at the gleaming suit of _beskar’gam_ towering over her.

“ _Vor entye_ , _Mand’alor_ , for coming for us.”

Coming to slowly on the ground, Axe must have heard the tail end of what she said because his voice trailed up shakily, exhausted but fervent.

“ _Oya, Mand’alor..._ ”

She heard Din sigh.

**Author's Note:**

> Some whump to go around for Din, Koska and Axe. Bit of gratuitous Mand'alor!Din because in that last scene all I had banging around in my brain was [this Tumblr post](https://sweetiepie08.tumblr.com/post/638409923213099008/mandalorians-he-is-the-mandalor-din-no-you). Hands down same energy. I love the headcanon that Din utterly unintentionally & reluctantly develops a rabidly loyal following of Mandalorians who love and worship him as Mand’alor because he is just, by nature, such a BAMF. 😂
> 
>  **Mando'a translations:**  
>  Keldabe - the old capital of Mandalore (pre-Clone Wars)  
> beskar'gam - Mandalorian full set of armor  
> osik - shit  
> vod - brother/sister  
> vode - brothers/sisters  
> susulur’ni - hear me  
> su cuy'gar - hello (lit. "You're still alive." - which felt appropriate here)  
> vor entye - thank you  
> Mand’alor - sole ruler  
> Oya, Mand’alor - hail the Mand'alor/praise the Mand'alor (oya can mean a lot of things, main emphatic and positive)


End file.
